Ivan B. Browne as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – designate of the corporation. Browne is expected to take up his substantive role as CEO on July 8th 2013 following the completion of his present technical consultancy.

Since January 2013, Browne has been heading a consultancy to assess the feasibility of an investment fund for Montserrat. Already more than six million dollars in potential investment has been identified and it is hoped that by July 2013, the fund will be established as a separate entity from the MDC. (MDC Fbook)

Browne said that as a Montserratian he was very keen to ensure that the “goals were achieved and to lead the corporation towards becoming a respected and admired corporate citizen.”

Among those goals, he stated, is to: Stimulate the local private sector, by improving access to finance, training, advice and property, giving priority to businesses that can export or substitute for imports, and

Provide business development support to the local private sector

Over and over Montserrat’s main financial sponsor /donor, Department for International Development (DfID) warned, begged that the people of Montserrat should be fully conversant with whatever the MDC is doing.

The following report is excerpted from an article appearing in the Caribbean Journal in Miami where MDC CEO Ivan Browne had been attending cruise ship conventions. It reports Browne as outlining the island’s (Montserrat’s) “plans for new development”.

Mr. Browne is yet to be heard in any forum expressing as comprehensively as he did according to this report. He appeared on invitation in December 2013 to speak to Mrs. Davis’ popular ‘Coffee Morning Group’, which is made up of nearly all expatriates. Mrs. Davis does invite the media to special occasions as this one.

There Browne had an entourage who accepted questions, following hiss presentation. Browne can be heard in tad bits of news items on ZJB radio, answering questions of concern that a few concerned people might have, but there is absolutely no provision of information and education to the public of Montserrat. (The public is invited to go online on the website)

The Investment Fund is yet to be registered although early last year he spoke of commitments to the fund. (see above). Browne unashamedly in December attempted to pass blame to the Financial Services Commission who confirmed that as Browne said they were ‘in the process of submitting applications for registration of the fund.’

The report – excerpts:

“Speaking at a media forum hosted at Caribbean Journal’s headquarters in Miami on Wednesday, Ivan Browne, CEO of the Montserrat Development Corporation, outlined the island’s plans for new development.

For almost the last two decades, the island has been focusing its efforts on “putting the island’s infrastructure back together again,” he said.

Now, the focus is on economic development and attracting investment.

It’s all centered on a site called Little Bay and Carr’s Bay, located in the “safe” zone of the island, a 225-acre site that will house the new capital town, a port, a marina, an 80-to-100-room hotel and other mixed-use development.

All told, the goal is to attract about $150 million for the new port project, and between $350 million and $400 million for the rest of the project, Browne said.

All of the new developed is concentrated on the north of the island, which, volcanic experts say, is utterly protected from any future eruptions…which have tended to flow east and west, but not north, Browne said.

And a large part of the development plans are tied to tourism, at one time a major economic driver on the island and something that decades ago drew in longtime

The plan, Browne said, is not mass tourism but creating a product focused around “affordable luxury, upscale tourism.”

“And despite the tragedy of the volcano, Browne said that, too, could serve as a kind of attraction, a chance for people to look at “a buried capital, a sort of modern-day Pompeii.”

“We’re trying to let people understand that it is more than the volcano,” he said. “A lot of people tend to think there are no people on the island, and we’re trying to say, ‘no, there’s a vibrant economy of 5,000 people on a lovely island that has overcome these natural disaster and are looking to welcome people back.”

“It’s a unique island,” he told Caribbean Journal. “It’s got a very resilient people who have been through a series of natural disasters. We’re very friendly, it’s very safe — and a number of people move to Montserrat because of that. We still have people who leave their cars open, who leave their houses open overnight.”

For years, he said, Montserrat had a self-sustaining economy, and the plan is to return to that.

“Prior to Hurricane Hugo and before the first eruption, we had a successful, diverse economic base of tourism, light manufacturing, agriculture and medical education,” he said. “We were entirely self-sufficient. We did not require any budgetary aid from Her Majesty’s government. We’re trying to get back to that stage where we were self-sufficient. That’s the aim — to by, say, 2020, that we can start being well on the road to self-sufficiency again.

So far, Montserrat has been courting investors around the world, including in areas that have recently been ramping up their interest in Caribbean investment: the United Arab Emirates and China.

Browne said the island was in part held back by its inability to offer Economic Citizenship as other countries like, most notably St Kitts and Nevis, have been able to do, because of Montserrat’s status as a British Overseas Territory.

The restriction on doing that has prevented the island from obtaining as much as $62.5 million in investment, Browne said.

But Montserrat offered another benefit beyond monetary return, he said: the opportunity to be a part of rebuilding an entire country.

“We’ve had a lot of people who are sort of anxious to be involved, not only from a financial point of view,but from a sort of emotive point of view,” he said. “”It’s not often people can say they were involved in the birth of a new capital.”

to be the Master Developer for Little Bay and Carr’s Bay, responsible for promoting, developing